Here Comes Trouble: Magicka 2 Adds New Elements

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Half the fun in Magicka came from trying to do something helpful but accidentally casting a spell that was very unexpected and deeply unhelpful, thanks to its squillion combo spells. It was quite nice when spells went well too, I suppose. Whatever you’re trying to accomplish – there’s always one joker determined to kill everyone – in Magicka 2 [official site] you can now add a few thousand extra spells to your arsenal, as the sequel has brought the Ice and Steam elements and created a new Poison element too. Just imagine all the ways those could combine badly with all your spells.

“Two of the three elements added to the Magicka 2 spellcasting system make their triumphant return from the classic repertoire of the original Magicka: Ice, created by combining Cold and Water, and Steam, created by combining digital software sales with a convenient interface. These new elements now occupy just one slot each in a five-element spell, allowing players to finally recombine Steam and Lightning, or Ice and Lightning, or Lightning and Lightning (which was available before but is honestly a very nice combination). An all-new element has been added as well: Poison, created by combining Water and Death, which generates a cloud of toxic, life-sapping gas. All spell elements are now lovingly rendered in a new visual effects system also being added to the game today, also for free, also.”

You know I haven’t played Magicka 2 at all, as my original co-op pals are now scattered to the corner of the globe. I heard mixed things, and the original game’s creators not making it did make me wary. How was it, reader pals?

10 Comments

I seem to remember that Poison also existed as an element in the first game, just not one you had access to. (Some of the Elemental type enemies have it as a type.) Nice to see it fully available in future.

I will give it another try now. I played when it came out and was below my expectations. Not because I wanted so much, but there were so many things lacking… The control scheme wasn’t the same and there were no options. When you cast combinations like whater and cold it wouldn’t become ice (it would still cast ice), consuming more slots. Now I see that they are changing things for better. Each update I see is actually a good addition to the game or an important fix so I guess it is coming to reach the milestone of a game that Magicka 1 achieved.

The controls of Magicka 2 feel sleeker, improved over the first iteration. But Magicka 2 has a huge issue with difficulty calibration. It is unplayable as 1 player. Barely playable as 2 players. The level design is not self-evident at all and could be improved (and is actively being improved by way if patches).

That’s disappointing. I liked the first game very much, but the single player campaign got too hard and I had to quit. I’ve thought about going back and trying it again with some AutoHotKey scripts to speed up the spellcasting, but that seems like it would defeat the point of the game.

Why are so many developers unable or unwilling to include genuinely easy difficulty settings in their games? It seems like a ridiculously simple way to increase the audience for your game.

If you played Magicka when it first came out, then it might be worth it for you to give it another try.
The reason for that is the fairy which appears at any checkpoint when you’re playing in single player. When you die, the fairy revives you and vanishes. You can only ever have one fairy, but doubling your survivability in singleplayer is a huge deal.
Also, rock shield and ice shield were changed so that you’re no longer immobile while using them. Rock+Shield slows you down, but covers you in stone, giving you essentially a second health bar that can be much larger than your actual health bar. Almost all attacks (I think Fire might be an exception) attack your rock shield first and only hurt your HP once the shield breaks. Even just one rock element greatly increases your survivability and slows you down very little.

Fell hard off magicka 2. I think they landed right in between wizard wars and magica 1 in the feel of the game, which threw everybody off. Was wondering which way they would topple and seems to be towards the magica 1 direction. I wanted to like this game so much (as I wanted to like wizard wars) but they just don’t draw me in for whatever reason. It makes me sad.